Home grown "stage 2" kit for my VF SC 2003 540

Started out innocently enough, get a SC kit for the 540 to give it a little more go on the highway and for the 4-5 HPDE's I do every year. Got the kit installed and I love it, the power is great and the extra torque is fantastic. Went and dyno'd it and was making 8.5psi on a 6psi kit (3 different boost gauges verified). Had a intake manifold gasket leak so the AFR's were a little rich at 10.3 or so (325whp, 315wtq). Recently fixed the intake manifold leak (bad gasket) and the AFR's are solid at 11-11.5 under WOT all the way to 6700 RPM's and now I'm making a peak of 9.8psi. I think someone at VF sent me the wrong size pulley as I haven't changed it... Anyway saves me some money for phase 2...

I figured before I even got the kit that I'd have to cool the intake charge some how before track season starts again. investigated the available methods (FMIC and Air to Water and Methanol Injection) Decided to go for FMIC for cost/simplicity reasons. In order to get room for the piping I had to do some work on the radiator expansion tank. Had Zionsville make me a custom E36 Expansion Tank to make room for the hot side charge pipe to the FMIC. Also got the zionsville radiator and electric fan while I was at it...

For the intercooler I'm having a custom fabbed bar and plate intercooler installed with mandrel bent and welded piping. I'm relocating the IAT from the MAF to the cool side of the intercooler. Now here's the thing, the VF kit tells the engine the intake air temperature from the MAF, but the real intake temperature in the manifold is substantially higher due to the compressing of the air. In order to handle this much higher intake temperature there is an offset in the program that pulls timing due to the higher intake temps vs the IAT's readings. This is safe and still yields good power.

The plan is to relocate the IAT and change the tune so that the engine can use the real IAT for timing advance.

The guy doing the tuning... You guessed it The world famous Mr. X! he's also going to get rid of that pesky MAF and make the tune Alpha-N. In addition he'll likely get rid of the secondary air pump so I can clean the engine bay up a bit and have more room to route IC piping... while keeping the whole DME emissions happy with no CEL's...

Radiator and Expansion tank are done, IC should be done late December, early January and Mr. X will be here late Jan early Feb. I'm expecting to crack the 400 whp mark, but it's not the end of the world if I don't. Just something nice and solid that isn't going to overtax the engine...

I'll keep updating as the project progresses. I'll post up some pics of the expansions tank and radiator install as well...

How do you get in contact with Mr. X if you don't know who he is? Is it one of those, you don't call him, he calls you, type of things? The more people talk about it the more intrigued I get.

I scoured the boards (M5 board, Bimmerforums, and the internet) to finally track him down. I think he's intentionally hard to find. I"ll find out more about why he likes to stay in the shadows once I meet him...

Quick update, car is as done as possible. Went to a Mustang dyne this time, last time was dyne jet. Car is making 7psi of boost, through the intercooler and were making 335WTQ and 333WHP. We figure about 50hp loss for the drivetrain, so almost 400hp. Also keep in mind the supercharger is taking power from the engine to the tune of about 40 hp, so the car internally is making 425-430hp on stock head bolts. mr.X warned me not go any higher without changing to arp headaches.

So the next phase is to do the headaches, more fuel, bigger crank pulley and possibly pro efi stand alone ECU so I can tune it myself!!

Talked to Jason there at ProEfi and he says their 128 could do it. Needs to be configured and wired, no small task... Also talking to Nick P at ACE about a Pectel SQ6 and John Reed about the proEFi and Pectel. Nice thing is you can take those ECU's with you for the next project when you put the car back to stock... I think the bottom end is good to about 500hp or so... Varying opinions. I've heard the M62 block is better for boost than the alusil S62 block. But the M62 rods are a weak point...